So there you have it...3 translations, two different units, pi=3.
Have fun with this one, literalists.
Sheesh. Where to begin... this is such a chestnut, it's hardly "fun" anymore.
First of all, about units and translations -- the text is certainly "cubits," it's just that translations sometimes attempt a units conversion, since nobody measures things in cubits anymore. (A cubit, IIRC, was the distance from fingertip to elbow -- kind of like that personal unit of measurement, the "foot," that no modern country uses anymore.:^)
Second, ever notice that 3 is a fine approximation of pi, to one significant digit?
Third, the text says "round", but does that truly mean perfectly circular? Tell you what -- you cast a 15-foot diameter basin, using iron age technology, and we'll see how closely your ratio of circumference to diameter approximates 3.14159...
Fourth, since I Kings doesn't come with an engineering schematic, who's to say that the basin didn't have an overhanging lip? That's a common enough design.
Fifth, this is a straw man anyhow. Practically nobody, other than anti-Christian propagandists, take the notion that "I Kings 7:23 means that the Bible teaches that pi is equal to 3" seriously -- including those (fnord) fundamentalists and (fnord) inerrantists. (I say "practically" because, in a world with more than a billion Christians, you might find a crank or two as who does believe that pi is 3 "because the Bible says so.")
I do profess to be impartial in the sense that I should be ashamed to talk such nonsense about the Lama of Thibet as they do about the Pope of Rome -- G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
Well, many books could (and have) been written on this topic, but it's actually very simple: Prayer is communication. You can see this reflected in the English language itself, although it's become archaic: "prithee" is a contraction of "I pray thee."
Now, since we don't normally use the word "pray" anymore when we make requests of each other, "prayer" has come to have a slightly more restricted meaning: Prayer is communication with the Divine.
Well, what does communication require? This is really not that complicated, either. Communication requires two persons who are, well, communicating. So the question "Can computers pray?" really breaks down into two questions (as has already been noted): (1) Does God exist? and (2) Can a computer have personhood?
Question #1 is clearly a religious question, which has been around for centuries, and the mere fact of using computers to pose the question is not particularly interesting.
Question #2 is also not a novel one. Certainly, iMacs don't qualify as even remotely passing any sort of Turing test yet. And the question of personhood and strong AI is already a subject of vigorous debate, here on Slashdot and elsewhere.
Since iMacs are pretty clearly not sentient, the question of whether they are "praying" is simple: NOT! This is exactly the same as setting up a tape player on endless loop, and has exactly the same (non-)implications.
But let's look at this for what it really is: a work of art. Ms. Skeddle is apparantly some sort of artist, and "CyberRosary" is part of an art exhibit. Art is also about communication. What is Skeddle trying to communicate?
Well, based on her interview comments, her point is simple: "Catholic spirituality is empty noise, and consists of people robotically repeating words they don't understand."
Skeddle is a clever artist -- if she simply came out and said that in such a blunt fashion, it wouldn't be news -- it would simply be one more person bitter about a church, and attacking it. But since she uses computers, and tries to pose her "question" in the form of the future of spirituality and technology, she's managed to make her simple rant against the Catholic Church into "News for Nerds."
She's taking very little artistic risk here, as well, as she's "playing to the audience," given the anti-religious, anti-Christian, and especialy anti-Catholic bias of much of both the artistic world (where it's practically considered obligatory to at least tweak Christianity to be considered a "serious" artist) and of the computer world (where "creed-holding Christians are rare", according to the Jargon File).
The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that requires real courage to say, and that is a truism. -- G. K. Chesterton, "G. F. Watts"
I realize you're not flaming here. You're questioning and debating, which are good things. I'm enjoying this conversation, other than the frustration from the feeling that we're talking past each other somewhat, and that I'm not sure how to understand your point better or make myself clearer.
A few answers to your questions:
You are correct that the only part of the Bible to come "direct from the hand of God," per the Bible itself, would be the Ten Commandments.
There are some portions that read, in effect "God said to write down X, so here it is." Revelation, some of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel come to mind. But you are also correct that most of the Bible is not in this form.
Nevertheless, the Christian claim is that all of the books of the Bible, even those whose human authors don't make the claim of "Thus saith the LORD" in the text, are in fact inspired by God and therefore, in some sense, "the word of God".
Now, what do we mean by "fact"? I take "fact" to mean simply a statement about reality that is true. It is a "fact" that water molecules are composed of two hydrogen atoms plus one oxygen atom. It is not a "fact" that the moon is made of green cheese.
The Christian claim about the Bible is either true or false. If it's true, then it's a fact that the Bible is the word of God; if not, then not.
I don't think that this claim is falsifiable, in the scientific sense. That's why it requires faith (something I already admitted). But please remember that "non-falsifiable" is not the same thing as "false."
Except that 2 Tim. 3:16 is of no use in discerning exactly which writings constitute Scripture in the first place...
... and at this point, we get deep enough into the development of the canon that I think we are now "news for theology nerds -- stuff that really matters"...
In the literal sense, the Bible is not the Word of God. God did not himself write it.
This is a straw man, as Christians do not generally mean that they believe God picked up a pen and wrote out the Bible in KJV English when they say that the Bible is the "word of God."
God did not dictate all of the books to whomever wrote them.
This is an an assertion; and one that I would be interesting in how you "know" this. It happens to be precisely what many Christians believe about the origin of the books of the Bible (although the exact means of inspiration is debatable; not all Christians hold this view).
Your unbelief hardly makes it a "fact that is readily verifiable." I'll happily admit that my belief that God inspired the human authors of the Bible is faith-based. But I'm boggled trying to imagine how I could prove that God didn't speak to John on the Isle of Patmos when he wrote down his vision.
Note, however, that Revelations was written much later than everything else in the Bible, and not by the same author(s). Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Bible is the result of a single, internally consistent effort. What is said in Revelations, for example, may or may not fit with the intentions of the author(s) of Deuteronomy, or the Gospels, or what have you.
Most Christians, in my experience, are quite aware that the books we now bundle as "Scripture" were composed by various human authors, at various times, and consist of various styles and genres of writing. Even the fundamentalist literalist inerrantists understand this point.:^)
[Which I've always thought had interesting implications for the "no tampering" clause at the end of Revelation. Is the scope supposed to be Revelation only, or the entire canon... ?]
The Bible is not the word of God; it is the word of many, many different humans, who all believed they were writing in accordance with God's will. Whether or not they were right is an article of faith.
If it's such an article of faith, why do you state the negative as such a fact?
I could be wrong, but I believe that most Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, agree that this is true.
Agree that what is true? That the Bible had many different human writers? Sure, everybody knows and agrees on that point. That the Bible is not "the word of God"? I don't think so.
While the exact relationship of "word of God" and "Scripture" is... somewhat nuanced and open to debate amongst Christians (I know, I've been in some of those debates), in general, every Christian group accepts that the Bible (with some disputes over exactly which writings make it up) is authoritative in matters of faith and morals, and is generally accurate if not inerrant/infallible/whatever.
Minor history lesson -- the Catholics did not formally define what books make up the Bible until the (post-Reformation) Council of Trent in 1546. There is no "official" Protestant list (how could there be, we're so bloody disorganized:^) but the general consensus is the list from Trent, minus the books of the "Deuterocanon/Apocrypha," for a total of 66 books. Trent was also well after the Great Schism of 1054, so it is not accepted by the Orthodox either, and I have no idea how they define the canon.
Hmmmm... Did they ever force anyone to buy Microsoft products? No. Did they harm consumers by forcing them to buy Microsoft? No. Consumers have always had alternatives like Unix, MacOS, WordPerfect, NetWare, etc. etc. By their own fairly clear definition, Microsoft is not, and has never been, a violator of the unConstitutional anti-trust laws.
Clearly, you and I have different definitions of the word "force," as I would answer those first two questions with an unqualified yes. No, BillG never put a gun to anybody's head. But Microsoft did quite clearly threaten to bankrupt OEMs who did not toe the Microsoft line on how the sales channel should operate. The original 1995 antitrust complaint (PC manufactures being required to pay MSFT for Windows licenses for every PC shipped, regardless of the actual OS installed) is about as cut and dried a case of forcing consumers to buy your product that I can think of, short of the few de jure monopolies that we've had in this country.
I am quite clear on the point that Microsoft, "by their own fairly clear definition," do not consider themselves a monopoly. However, I (and more importantly, Judge Jackson) do not accept Microsoft's self-serving definition of "monopoly" any more than than I feel compelled to accept President Clinton's self-serving definitions of "sex" and "is."
As for your repeated assertions that antitrust laws are unconstitutional, feel free to point out to me an analysis of exactly which Article or Amendment the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or any other antitrust legislation violates.
So far as I know, nobody has ever been forced to use IE to browse a single website.
Try browsing Microsoft's pages sometime with Netscape, or better yet, Lynx. Now, imagine having a job that depends on getting technical information from Microsoft. Or doesn't that count as "force," since the threat is only to my livelihood, and not directly to my person?
What's so bad about enriching all of Microsoft's stockholders? What's so bad about making many Microsoft employees instant millionaires? What's so bad about making products that are at least usable enough so that plenty of people buy them and increase their personal and corporate productivity? What's so terrible about having Bill concentrate his wealth?
Nothing, if he can do it ethically and legally.
The point is, he didn't.
If BillG and MSFT had achieved and maintained their dominance simply through superior product value, saavy marketing, and innovating new goods as claimed, there would be no problem. When they use their dominance in the OS to destroy rivals in applications, when they dictate to PC manufactures what OS may be installed and what icons shall appear on the desktop, and when they can rely on their superior cash reserves to buy out or destroy potentially competetive products, they are no longer competing by offering value, but simply attempting to manipulate a market to their advantage. This is unethical, and it is illegal, rightfully so.
And speaking of "private" vs. "public" concentrations of wealth, how about having at least one person in this country whose own wits, sacrifice and hard work have made him worth as much as 1/1000th of the yearly budget of the Federal Government of These United States, not to mention 1/10000th of the National Debt.
It would be neat if such a person existed, but William Gates III is not that person.
I suspect this is just pointless -- I concede that Bill Gates never took a handgun, walked through the electronic stores of the nation, and threatened people with their lives if they didn't walk up to the register and buy Windows and Office. Anything less than this, it appears that you won't recognize as unethical and illegal behavior. So be it.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.-- B. Franklin
I can quote Franklin too. I agree with Ben's sentiment -- which is why I'm glad the government is doing its job, and dealing with a dangerous monopolist before liberty is further eroded...
It may be very difficult for modern people to imagine a world in which men are not generally admired for coveteousness and crushing their neighbors; but I assure them that such strange patches of an earthly paradise do really remain on earth. -- G. K. Chesterton, "The Outline of Sanity"
Microsoft is most certainly not a true monopoly (operating systems are software programs, which are about as far from a true monopoly as anything in this world).
It would seem that Judge Jackson disagrees with you.:^)
While I will admit to not having read through the Findings of Fact myself yet, it seems clear that a major point was that Microsoft does meet the legal definition of a "monopoly."
Blame the consumers who bought PCs (and proprietary software) when what they ran was MS-DOS (or PC-DOS) for that dominance; it has nothing to do with M$'s recent marketing practices.
I disagree -- while consumer inertia due to backwards compatibility is certainly a factor in MSFT dominance, their attempts to lock in that dominance by (a) intentionally misfeaturing their software, but more importantly (b) bullying the sales channel to lock out competitive entries seems a clear abuse of a real monopoly position to me.
I think the true history of M$ "market dominance" is far more nuanced than that which you suggest.
I agree that there are a lot of nuances to the MSFT story; but I still think the upshot is that Microsoft broke the law.
What law? Some unConstitutional law created by anti-capatalist socialists in the middle of this most bloody of all centuries (soon to end, thankfully!).
One is always on dangerous grounds when deciding to flaunt a law because "it's unConstitutional anyway." You need to be willing to run the risk that the Supreme Court will not agree with your legal analysis.
Besides, I think it's pretty clear that Bill and MSFT flaunted the anti-trust laws out of their own "greed, envy, and will-to-power," rather than out of some selfless, Constitution-upholding principle.
Your Red-baiting aside, whatever you think of the politics of supporters of anti-trust legislation, the reality today is that anti-trust laws were passed, by popular demand, by the democratically-elected Legislature, and have been upheld by the Executive-appointed Judiciary. All three branches of our "checks and balances" involved.
Monopolies cannot continue in the real world without government support. If the GSA decided today that Microsoft products were not on the GSA schedule, Microsoft would go down like a lead balloon.
True, and the GSA ought to do just this, but irrelevant to the questions of whether MSFT has broken the law and should suffer the consequences.
Far better had the GSA taken that route than the Justice Department brought this greedy and envious suit against America's most successful entrepreneur.
I agree that it would have been better if the GSA had been serious about "open systems" in procurement. Perhaps there would have been no need for an antitrust trial by this point.
But "most successful entrepeneur"? Give me a break. Check out How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates. Bill was never without an economic safety net, his product was not an innovation in any sense, and he had family connections in getting that fateful first IBM contract. I have much more respect for the thousands of mom-and-pop entrepeneurs who actually take some risks and whose livelihoods depend on customer satisfaction than for Bill's (admittedly masterful) skill in predatory business tactics and monopoly creation/exploitation.
But it is clearly greed, envy, and will-to-power that drives Janet Reno and her murderous (remember Waco?) minons to browbeat the world's greatest wealth creator.
Unlike you, I have no ability to peer into the soul of Janet Reno and discern her true motivation for having her department do its job.
"World's greatest wealth creator"? Bah humbug. BillG is the world's greatest (private) wealth concentrator. But he and his company have become so wealthy through the exercise of monopoly power (as Judge Jackson's FoF testify), not through building better software mousetraps. Denying one's competitors entry into the marketplace to protect the profit margin of your product can hardly qualify as "wealth creation." Extortion, perhaps, but not creation.
"Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business." -- G. K. Chesterton
This is about power and it's obscene. I don't want Washington to decide how a private company might be split up. Is anyone stupid enough to think that this hasn't become a completely political action in the continual pattern of demonizing anyone who's worked hard and earned great wealth.
Boo hoo hoo -- let's all feel sorry for the poor oppressed billionaire, being persecuted by the Big Evil Gub'mint.
Bill's company is not in court for being sucessfull, but for breaking the law. Repeat that over and over until it sinks in -- "it's not about success, it's about crime." (Of course, anti-trust law is funny in that you have to be successful in order to have the means to break these laws -- but if Bill & Co. are so smart, and have so many lawyers on their payroll, you'd think they'd have heard of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act before now...)
Say what you want about Billy Boy but he has done more for America (creating jobs, preeminence of the US in office automation and OS software market etc.) than any of those idiots in Washington put together.
I do not subscribe to the theory that "what's good for Bill Gates is good for America."
All of these points (net job creation, American business dominance) are... arguable. There's certainly some folks at Netscape who would claim that Bill didn't help build jobs at their company...
Regardless, we must come back to the basic point: Microsoft broke the law. The DOJ action is not an example of government out of control -- it is an example of the goverment doing its job to enforce the (democratically enacted) law.
Sheesh. Might as well feel sorry for those sucessful businessmen, the cocaine smugglers, when they tangle with government law enforcement. I suppose they ought to try using the defense that they are simply hard-working capitalist entrepeneurs, and that the goverment ought to leave private companies alone and not tell them how to run their business...
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. -- G. K. Chesterton, "The Man Who Was Thursday"
Ever noticed how many people claim it's organized religion they object to? Makes me wonder what's so great about incoherent religion. -- Teresa Nielsen Hayden
*smile* but Motorola was asked for the changes to GCC that shipped on the machine. Hence the statement from Motorola that 'they had a seperate licence from FSF'
Ah. That would be different.
But still kosher, if in fact they do have a license from the FSF. This is one consequence of the FSF's insistance on copyright assignment -- they do have the right to negotiate a separate license agreement.
Remember that one of the classic points about the GPL is that people who want to use GPL'ed code in a proprietary fashion always have the right to go to the license holder and negotiate a different license...
(... which makes things more interesting for Linux in the embedded space, as I don't think Linus has been as anal-retentive as the FSF about copyright assignment. Imagine trying to track down all the contributors to the Linux kernel to negotiate different license terms...)
I agree that this is about giving Red Hat access to the embedded world (in which Cygnus is a major player). Notice that Microsoft gained dominance on the desktop, and is trying to play that upwards into the server space -- it would make sense for Red Hat to try a similar ploy, leveraging Cygnus in the embedded space to help create opportunities in desktop/server spaces.
One quibble: you write
Oh, think this is good for OpenSource and the GPL? Try this: Motorola uses GCC on its switches. Ask Motorola for its changes to GCC. You won't get them. They say because they licenced them from FSF, they don't have to.
This is all kosher. You can use GCC to write proprietary applications, and if you don't actually redistribute GCC, you are not required by the GPL to make your changes available.
(If you have products using Linux 'embedded', then write the companies and ask for the source code. See what they say, just for yucks.)
This is a real issue, and is one that the free software community will need to deal with carefully in the days and years to come...
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
I think you have been reading too many Tom Clancy novels. How can the ordinary citizen know that the NSA is "essential" for "fighting terrorism" when the NSA's very existance was classified for years, and its budget and most of its operations are still classified? Your statement about the NSA's "necessity" is in the classic sense pure pseudo-science, because it is non-falsifiable. How has the NSA prevented any bombs from going off on American soil. "Sorry, sir, that's classified. But trust us, we're the government, and we have your best interests at heart." The American politicial experiment is based on the assumtion that we dare not trust that the government has the best interests of the people at heart, and so the government is supposed to be accountable to the people, and restrained by the rights of the individual.
The erosion of liberties rarely comes packaged with a label that says "here is a totalitarian control; please hand over your freedom now." It most often comes packaged as "there are Bad People(tm) out there! Let us protect you!"
If we "need" a secret police state to protect us from terrorists, we have already lost the real struggle. A wise teacher once said, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36, KJV) The same question certainly applies to nations. What will it profit America if we become the new Roman Empire, able to enforce a pax americana at home and abroad, if we lose the very idea of what it meant to be "America" in the first place?
Evil and undemocratic means do not give real security
While I will no doubt offend the rabid secularists of/. with this, I would like to point out that the inscription on our currency of "In God We Trust" is a great and necessary viewpoint for the preservation of freedom. [Whether the USA is truly living up to this motto is another matter -- I think it is clear we do not.] If you don't like the word "God", feel free to substitute "Providence", "Fate", "the Universe", or what have you, according to your own tradition and belief. Regardless, the point is that one can try to create one's own security through strength and power, or one can simply try to do the right thing, and trust that it will all work out in the end. That is what "In God We Trust" ought to mean -- that as a nation, we are committed to the principles of liberty, and are willing to risk "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" to live as if this mattered. Even in a dangerous world with certifiable Bad People(tm) out there.
The "security" offered by relying on power is no security at all. Totalitarian regimes fall. Empires crumble. Economies collapse. "Invincible" armies are defeated, "impregnable" defences are broached, and the wheel of history turns again. And really, power is not so absolute as all that. If the USA were to turn into a privacy-lost, thought-police-controlled Absolute Safety State tomorrow, do you really believe that we could make ourselves invulnerable?
If we are willing to send our young men and women to fight and die for oil in the Mideast, don't you think the rest of us ought to be willing to assume some risk to live and die for liberty?
(Of course, the sadly obvious answer is that most Americans would today gladly trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety.)
This is a bug, not a feature
If our society is so fragile that a few terrorists, or the actions of a minor rogue state, can bring us to our knees unless we adopt draconian security measures, I think we ought to admit that this is a bug in the system, rather than resign ourselves to it as a "feature". Slashdotters are quick to lambast the fragility of Microsoft products and praise the stability and robustness of Linux -- now apply this same criticism to the larger technical, economic, and political infrastructures.
Does the electrical power grid offer key targets of opportinity for terrorists? Well then, we should get serious about "negawatts" in the Amory Lovins sense, and look at distributed, locally-generated power rather than relying on a massive electrical grid with a few key failure points and modes. Or even be willing to contemplate the practice of certain Amish groups, which have the rule of "use as much electricity as you want, as long as you make it yourself and don't tie into the grid." Better this, than to live with a secret police.
For an example that's nearer to fruition, consider Richard Stallman. While I might quibble with his analysis of freedom and software (I don't think access to source code is quite as fundamental a right as RMS does), he has certainly done the correct thing with his analysis -- he determined not to allow what he considered to be essential freedoms to be bargained away for the sake of convenience and security, and did the work necessary to live freely. We are all reaping the benefits of his adherance to principle today.
Repeat this analyis with other points of vulnerablity as needed. There's certainly lots of room for debate as to the benefits and drawbacks of particular answers, be we certainly have more options than to be forced to choose between secret, unaccountable intelligence agencies and "a war zone."
For a start on considering this way of thinking, there are several essays by Wendell Berry that may be helpful. (Note: Berry is not a pacifist -- but he believes that our current strategies of "national defense" fail to defend our nation.) Try "Property, Patriotism, and National Defense" in Home Economics and "On Peaceableness Toward Enemies" in Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community.
This is the huge modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul. If soap boiling is really inconsistent with brotherhood, so much the worst for soap-boiling, not for brotherhood. If civilization really cannot get on with democracy, so much the worse for civilization, not for democracy. Certainly, it would be far better to go back to village communes, if they really are communes. Certainly, it would be better to do without soap rather than to do without society. Certainly, we would sacrifice all our wires, wheels, systems, specialties, physical science and frenzied finance for one half-hour of happiness such as has often come to us with comrades in a common tavern. I do not say the sacrifice will be necessary; I only say it will be easy. -- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
Well, alienation of labor was not a bad idea (I'm not sure if Marx came up first with it, though), but I'd like to point out that in a lot of situations the pre-industrial peasants were "working for somebody else" because they didn't own the land.
I don't know for certain that Marx originated the idea, but he certainly made heavy use of it.
And I don't think the fact that there were abuses of the peasantry invalidates the point of the alienation of industrial labor. It's just a different deviation from the ideal of a person who is working skillfully, with dignity, and enjoying the benefits of their own labor.
Besides, treating the worker as an automaton is a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, and not necessarily capitalism.
Well, that's a pretty fine distinction there, given how the two are intertwingled.
I think there's a good argument to be made that much of the technology of the Industrial Revolution was shaped by and for capitalism, and that the effect, coincidentally or by design, was to widen the gap between owners and laborers, and to bring about just the situation of "alienation of labor." But that's a longer argument that I have time to get into right now...
Not true. Laissez-faire capitalism assumes a large mass of competing capitalists. If the means of production become concentrated in the hands of the few, monopolies and cartels appear and the invisible hand breaks down.
Well, yes, but if you take the steps to keep that mass of little capitalists from coalescing into a few cartels and monopolists, is it truly laissez-faire anymore?
At any rate, I consider the fact that we do need to worry about cartels and monopolists under capitalism (witnes the Microsoft-DOJ trial) as very good evidence that capitalism, in any sort of "pure" form, does tend to the concentration of capital in very few hands. A situation that is not especially friendly to "little" things like freedom and democracy... which are not synonomous with "free-market capitalism."
Democracy has one real enemy, and that is civilization. Those utilitarian miracles which science has made are anti-democratic, not so much in their perversion, or even in their practical result, as in their primary shape and purpose. The Frame-Breaking Rioters were right; not perhaps in thinking that machines would make fewer men workmen; but certainly in thinking that machines would make fewer men masters. More wheels do mean fewer handles; fewer handles do mean fewer hands. The machinery of science must be individualistic and isolated. A mob can shout round a palace; but a mob cannot shout down a telephone. The specialist appears and democracy is half spoiled at a stroke. -- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World
Oh, I think Marx hit the nail on the head with his "alienation of labor" idea -- that is, industrial labor is qualitatively different from agrarian/craft labor, because (1) the laboror is no longer in control of the "means of production", so he is working for somebody else, not himself, and (2) industrial labor treats the worker as an automaton, not as a real human. Based on my experience in factory work, I think he was 100% correct there. And he was justifiably outraged at the horrific abuses going on in the factory sweatshops of the early 1800's.
Now, Marx was completely wrong about the nature of the human problem (Marxian thought holds that people are fine, generous, and unselfish by nature, and if we can only get the social structures right we can create utopia), about "historical inevitability" and the natural progressions of societies (so wrong, that Lenin had to drastically revise Marx to explain Russian Bolshevism, as KM taught that it would be impossible for a society to move directly from a peasent/agrarian state to a Communist state without industrialization first -- precisely what did happen in Russia). And, of course, so awfully wrong about the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the "withering away" of the State that it would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
Also, keep in mind that there are in fact many options besides Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" and Smith's "invisible hand" of laissez-faire capitalism. In fact, both stand for the concentration of working capital and the means of production in the hands of a few -- the difference being who those few are (Communists choose goverenment officials, Capitalists choose captitalists). For one alternative, try a search for "Distributism", or simply read some of the political works of G. K. Chesterton, such as What's Wrong With The World
Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business. -- G. K. Chesterton
Maybe I don't know what I should be meaning--I wasn't the one who originally used the phrase. However, I took it to mean that there were no true statements that were contradicted by the ones with a lock, and that there were no false statements put forth. (This is essentially the same as "inerrant".)
Pretty much, although the various Christian groups's claims of "inerrancy" or "infallibility" are actually more limited than is popularly understood. Example 1: evangelical/fundamentalist groups speak of the Bible being "infallible" and "inerrant in the original manuscripts" -- but recognize that (a) translators can screw up or slant things, (b) individuals and groups are capable of screwing up their interpretations (obvious, given the disagreemnts between groups), and (c) there are areas of ambiguity where differences of understanding are quite legitimate. Example 2: When Roman Catholics speak of the Pope being "infallible," it is only "in matters of faith and morals and when speaking ex cathedra (formally on behalf of the entire Church)". Ex cathedra pronouncements have happened exactly twice in history, so it's not as if this means that the Pope can never be wrong.
Both groups also have the idea of "development of doctrine" -- that is, we refine our understanding as we both (a) work out the theological implications of the core truths that have been accepted from the beginning, and (b) work out the relationship of those truths to what we understand of the world around us.
Furthermore, I'd require that you be able to communicate the truth. If you can't communicate, the knowledge is irrelevant (and therefore isn't much of a "lock").
Sure, that's reasonable.
If the traditional interpretation was that Genesis was a fable with little to no basis in reality[1], it was somehow forgotten and--given the number of biblical literalists today--hasn't ever been fully remembered. This isn't exactly locklike behavior.
Well, I would dispute both that (1) the understanding of Genesis as "not a science text" has been forgotten by more than a vocal minority of Christians in recent history, and (2) that the Genesis account has "little or no basis in reality" (for example, the idea that the universe had a beginning was unthinkable to Aristotle, yet modern cosmological theories support this -- but who knows, the cosmologers might change their minds again). But that would get us deep into the whole origins debate...
But at this point it's getting rather silly; if I define the standards for having a lock to be high enough, no one will be able to meet them. If you define them low enough, someone will. Perhaps we should quit already, while we're only behind?
That's probably the wise thing to do.:^)
[1] (E.g. "README: To install, rcp the hqm.1.7.tgz tarball, explode, grep * for D_INST_DIR and pipe to rpm." "Huh????" "You have to interpret that in context. You see, they mean click on the crossed-out goldfish icon." "Oh.")
Please define "having a lock on truth," because the more we go round, the less I'm sure I know what you mean by this. It's certainly not a phrase that Christians use, in my experience. We might speak of Christianity being "true", or "containing the fullness of truth", or being "inerrant," but nobody I know or have read ever says that Christians "have a lock on truth." (Sounds like a system call to me -- int fd;
fd = open("truth", O_RDONLY); if (fd < 0) { perror("the truth isn't out there"); }
if (flock(fd, LOCK_EX) < 0) { perror("unable to attain lock on truth"); } else { printf("truth locked for exlusive access"); } )
The traditional Christian (and before that, Jewish) understanding of how Genesis is supposed to be understood within the tradition is far from irrelevant here. If you want to insist on ignoring it, you're free to -- but then you're simply setting up a straw man.
Well, I don't actually think that miracles have ceased since the times you mention, but they certainly aren't as public and spectacular as the ones Moses worked...
There are two very good little volumes by C. S. Lewis on just this subject -- Miracles and The Problem of Pain. He works through a number of arguments on just this topic. If you don't want to fund my web habit via Amazon, I'm sure a paper library near you should be able to find them.:^)
And that's all I'm going to say on Slashdot about this. This has been a good discussion; thanks.
OK, I can't comment broadly about creation stories in any religion except my own, so I'll stick to that.
Firstly, I think that you're mischaracterizing the Genesis debate within Christianity (unsurprising, the "Genesis as scientific proof" side gets most of the press time). But (as far as my limited knowledge goes), writers in the Patristic period (early few centuries of Christianity) understood quite well that (1) our knowlegdge of the physical world is provisional at best, and (2) texts such as Genesis have a moral purpose, are were not meant as treatises on "natural philosophy." A quote from that period is that "the Scriptures are meant to tell us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go." Since this was more than a thousand years before Darwin, I don't think this counts as "backtracking."
My point is, if you want to engage seriously whether and how science does or doesn't impinge on the truth claims of a religion, you have to understand what those truth claims are and how they are held within that religion.
You sure don't go for the piddly little objections, do you?:^)
What you're describing is, in a nutshell, "The Problem of Evil" and "The Problem of Freedom." These are big topics, and I suspect unanswerable to your satisfaction in a Slashdot reply. But I'll try anyway.
First of all, I would disagree that God has been inactive during "mankind's darkest hours." To be blunt, God was active at Auschwitz. I think even a passing familiarity with Maximillian Kolbe, or the countless other stories of faith and heroism in the face of evil unleashed, should make that clear. Your complaint is that evil should never have been allowed in the first place, and the fact that it is is disproof of either God's goodness or his power.
My counter-question to you is "how free ought we to be?" God, apparantly, seems to have valued our freedom enough that he treats us as truly free agents -- free, even, to disobey him and hurt others. What would you have happen? Bullets vanishing before they hit people? Money disappearing out of safes if people get too greedy? Sound waves morphing in midair so that hateful works cannot be transmitted? The neurons in our brains refusing to form thoughts that would be "sinthink?" (I'm borrowning heavily from a C. S. Lewis essay on this very subject for these examples, you should go to the source rather than rely on my poor paraphrase.)
That's the beginning of an answer. I realize it's not a complete answer yet, and doesn't address all your points. Unfortunately, that's all I have time for right now. Feel free to contact me if you want to continue the discussion.
If a religion were to have a lock on what is objectively true, then they would never be wrong when someone else is right
Right, so far. Assuming that that religion and that "someone else" disagreed, of course. I can't think of any religion that claims that everyone else is 100% wrong (yes, including Christianity). "There is only one God, and He is not representable by human artifacts" is a truth statement that Christians recognize as true when a Muslim or a Jew says it as well.
All religions contain such examples (unless you define the religion to be true and say that aspects of the real world are "false").
Wow. That's an amazingly broad statement.
First problem: how do you know this? Have you studied all religions? What criteria are you using to find them objectively false? Two examples -- I know practically nothing about the traditional religion of the Lakota Sioux, so I would have no basis for claiming that their religion has some objective error (my ignorance doesn't disprove anything). So, I could not make this claim about the Lakota religion. Second example -- I know slightly more about Hinduism. While I disagree with Hinduism on religious grounds, I'd be very interested to know how you've managed to falsify it "objectively".
And, of course, since I am a Christian, I think you're mistaken about there being anything "objectively true" that contradicts the Christian faith. But full-scale apologetics is rather off-topic to Slashdot, so I'll leave it at that. Feel free to mail questions/flames/whatever if you want more elaboration.
I've read before where you point out that cryptography != security, that is, you can't sprinkle the magic pixie dust of crypto over software and expect that the resulting system is therefore secure.
Now that everybody and their sister is connecting to the Internet, via dial-up or even 24x7 cable modem or DSL connections, what level of paranoia is appropriate, and where do you recommend beginning?
Jon, Jon, if you're going to be a "free speech rulz, why can't everybody just get along" kind of guy, you really need to get over this allergy you seem to have to anything labelled "Christian"...
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. -- G. K. Chesterton
If I hadn't been able to find the company page for the game, I would have guessed that this was a hoax/parody/whatever in the style of Jesux rather than a real product. But granted, somebody really is releasing a DOOM-style first person shooter game, with an "angels 'n' demons" theme, and marketing it as a "Christian" game.
I suppose if somebody is going to wrap a DOOM interface around the process list, and given the all the work done on DOOM/Quake "skins", that this was inevitable. But what wider conclusions are appropriate from this?
The arrival of the first Christian computer action game opens a whole new chapter in the never-ending struggle between technology and the self-proclaimed forces of morality.
Wow. One sentence, and at least four glaring problems:
"first Christian computer action game": Technically, it's the first "first-person shooter" game billing itself as Christian. There have been Christian action games for a while, based on the "Mario" model, plus others. So it's not the first "action" game. Furthermore, just because somebody slaps a "Christian" label on something and hopes to make a buck off of the Christian market doesn't automatically make something Christian.
"opens a whole new chapter": Maybe in the mind of Jon Katz, but I reserve the right to see if "The War in Heaven" sells more than a few dozen copies before I count this as anything earthshattering.
"in the never-ending struggle between technology and..." Sigh. We've gone over this before. Christianity is not anti-technology. Even the Amish are not anti-technology (as proof, consider the fact that some of the most important agricultural innovations of the last 200 years stem from Amish experimentation and innovation, and that they continually improve upon their farm equipent and assimilate certain technologies from the "English" world.
"... and the self-proclaimed forces of morality." Ah. The "self-proclaimed" is the tip-off. Anything that starts with namecalling this early is sure to be a rant on how those awful Christians are trying to ruin everyone's fun by not celebrating the uplifting virtues of pr0n on the Internet and gore in first-person shooter games.
Let's see... relate everything in the world to the Columbine shootings, drag out the old myths about Galileo... flog, flog, flog.
Has it occurred to you that, rather than some sea change, this is simply some guys with a software firm out to make a few bucks?!.
As for myself, and the other Christians I know, the release of "War in Heaven" is going to be a yawner. For those Christians who don't mind DOOM/Quake (yes, they exist), this won't mean anything. For those who object to first-person shooter games because of the violent paradigm, the fact that the characters are dressed up as angels and demons will not make it better (in fact, it makes it worse, as it verges on being a blasphemous attempt to exploit for profit). I suppose there will be some small segment of Christian parents of teens who view the release of this game with a small sigh of relief -- those in the category of not liking this kind of game, realizing that kids are going to play them anyway, and being happy that there is at least a "kinder and gentler" alternative.
But for a person who objects so strenuously against the stereotyping of "geeks," and to the usage of stereotype to push an agenda, you've got some housecleaning to do yourself in that departmet.
I do profess to be impartial in the sense that I should be ashamed to talk such nonsense about the Lama of Thibet as they do about the Pope of Rome -- G. K. Chesterton
Slashdot Mirror
Sheesh. Where to begin ... this is such a chestnut, it's hardly "fun" anymore.
First of all, about units and translations -- the text is certainly "cubits," it's just that translations sometimes attempt a units conversion, since nobody measures things in cubits anymore. (A cubit, IIRC, was the distance from fingertip to elbow -- kind of like that personal unit of measurement, the "foot," that no modern country uses anymore. :^)
Second, ever notice that 3 is a fine approximation of pi, to one significant digit?
Third, the text says "round", but does that truly mean perfectly circular? Tell you what -- you cast a 15-foot diameter basin, using iron age technology, and we'll see how closely your ratio of circumference to diameter approximates 3.14159...
Fourth, since I Kings doesn't come with an engineering schematic, who's to say that the basin didn't have an overhanging lip? That's a common enough design.
Fifth, this is a straw man anyhow. Practically nobody, other than anti-Christian propagandists, take the notion that "I Kings 7:23 means that the Bible teaches that pi is equal to 3" seriously -- including those (fnord) fundamentalists and (fnord) inerrantists. (I say "practically" because, in a world with more than a billion Christians, you might find a crank or two as who does believe that pi is 3 "because the Bible says so.")
What is prayer, anyway?
Well, many books could (and have) been written on this topic, but it's actually very simple: Prayer is communication. You can see this reflected in the English language itself, although it's become archaic: "prithee" is a contraction of "I pray thee."
Now, since we don't normally use the word "pray" anymore when we make requests of each other, "prayer" has come to have a slightly more restricted meaning: Prayer is communication with the Divine.
Well, what does communication require? This is really not that complicated, either. Communication requires two persons who are, well, communicating. So the question "Can computers pray?" really breaks down into two questions (as has already been noted): (1) Does God exist? and (2) Can a computer have personhood?
Question #1 is clearly a religious question, which has been around for centuries, and the mere fact of using computers to pose the question is not particularly interesting.
Question #2 is also not a novel one. Certainly, iMacs don't qualify as even remotely passing any sort of Turing test yet. And the question of personhood and strong AI is already a subject of vigorous debate, here on Slashdot and elsewhere.
Since iMacs are pretty clearly not sentient, the question of whether they are "praying" is simple: NOT! This is exactly the same as setting up a tape player on endless loop, and has exactly the same (non-)implications.
But let's look at this for what it really is: a work of art. Ms. Skeddle is apparantly some sort of artist, and "CyberRosary" is part of an art exhibit. Art is also about communication. What is Skeddle trying to communicate?
Well, based on her interview comments, her point is simple: "Catholic spirituality is empty noise, and consists of people robotically repeating words they don't understand."
Skeddle is a clever artist -- if she simply came out and said that in such a blunt fashion, it wouldn't be news -- it would simply be one more person bitter about a church, and attacking it. But since she uses computers, and tries to pose her "question" in the form of the future of spirituality and technology, she's managed to make her simple rant against the Catholic Church into "News for Nerds."
She's taking very little artistic risk here, as well, as she's "playing to the audience," given the anti-religious, anti-Christian, and especialy anti-Catholic bias of much of both the artistic world (where it's practically considered obligatory to at least tweak Christianity to be considered a "serious" artist) and of the computer world (where "creed-holding Christians are rare", according to the Jargon File).
zantispam,
I realize you're not flaming here. You're questioning and debating, which are good things. I'm enjoying this conversation, other than the frustration from the feeling that we're talking past each other somewhat, and that I'm not sure how to understand your point better or make myself clearer.
A few answers to your questions:
Now, what do we mean by "fact"? I take "fact" to mean simply a statement about reality that is true. It is a "fact" that water molecules are composed of two hydrogen atoms plus one oxygen atom. It is not a "fact" that the moon is made of green cheese.
The Christian claim about the Bible is either true or false. If it's true, then it's a fact that the Bible is the word of God; if not, then not.
I don't think that this claim is falsifiable, in the scientific sense. That's why it requires faith (something I already admitted). But please remember that "non-falsifiable" is not the same thing as "false."
Does that clarify or muddy?
Except that 2 Tim. 3:16 is of no use in discerning exactly which writings constitute Scripture in the first place ...
... and at this point, we get deep enough into the development of the canon that I think we are now "news for theology nerds -- stuff that really matters" ...
This is a straw man, as Christians do not generally mean that they believe God picked up a pen and wrote out the Bible in KJV English when they say that the Bible is the "word of God."
This is an an assertion; and one that I would be interesting in how you "know" this. It happens to be precisely what many Christians believe about the origin of the books of the Bible (although the exact means of inspiration is debatable; not all Christians hold this view).
Your unbelief hardly makes it a "fact that is readily verifiable." I'll happily admit that my belief that God inspired the human authors of the Bible is faith-based. But I'm boggled trying to imagine how I could prove that God didn't speak to John on the Isle of Patmos when he wrote down his vision.
Most Christians, in my experience, are quite aware that the books we now bundle as "Scripture" were composed by various human authors, at various times, and consist of various styles and genres of writing. Even the fundamentalist literalist inerrantists understand this point. :^)
[Which I've always thought had interesting implications for the "no tampering" clause at the end of Revelation. Is the scope supposed to be Revelation only, or the entire canon ... ?]
If it's such an article of faith, why do you state the negative as such a fact?
Agree that what is true? That the Bible had many different human writers? Sure, everybody knows and agrees on that point. That the Bible is not "the word of God"? I don't think so.
While the exact relationship of "word of God" and "Scripture" is ... somewhat nuanced and open to debate amongst Christians (I know, I've been in some of those debates), in general, every Christian group accepts that the Bible (with some disputes over exactly which writings make it up) is authoritative in matters of faith and morals, and is generally accurate if not inerrant/infallible/whatever.
Minor history lesson -- the Catholics did not formally define what books make up the Bible until the (post-Reformation) Council of Trent in 1546. There is no "official" Protestant list (how could there be, we're so bloody disorganized :^) but the general consensus is the list from Trent, minus the books of the "Deuterocanon/Apocrypha," for a total of 66 books. Trent was also well after the Great Schism of 1054, so it is not accepted by the Orthodox either, and I have no idea how they define the canon.
Clearly, you and I have different definitions of the word "force," as I would answer those first two questions with an unqualified yes. No, BillG never put a gun to anybody's head. But Microsoft did quite clearly threaten to bankrupt OEMs who did not toe the Microsoft line on how the sales channel should operate. The original 1995 antitrust complaint (PC manufactures being required to pay MSFT for Windows licenses for every PC shipped, regardless of the actual OS installed) is about as cut and dried a case of forcing consumers to buy your product that I can think of, short of the few de jure monopolies that we've had in this country.
I am quite clear on the point that Microsoft, "by their own fairly clear definition," do not consider themselves a monopoly. However, I (and more importantly, Judge Jackson) do not accept Microsoft's self-serving definition of "monopoly" any more than than I feel compelled to accept President Clinton's self-serving definitions of "sex" and "is."
As for your repeated assertions that antitrust laws are unconstitutional, feel free to point out to me an analysis of exactly which Article or Amendment the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or any other antitrust legislation violates.
Try browsing Microsoft's pages sometime with Netscape, or better yet, Lynx. Now, imagine having a job that depends on getting technical information from Microsoft. Or doesn't that count as "force," since the threat is only to my livelihood, and not directly to my person?
Nothing, if he can do it ethically and legally.
The point is, he didn't.
If BillG and MSFT had achieved and maintained their dominance simply through superior product value, saavy marketing, and innovating new goods as claimed, there would be no problem. When they use their dominance in the OS to destroy rivals in applications, when they dictate to PC manufactures what OS may be installed and what icons shall appear on the desktop, and when they can rely on their superior cash reserves to buy out or destroy potentially competetive products, they are no longer competing by offering value, but simply attempting to manipulate a market to their advantage. This is unethical, and it is illegal, rightfully so.
It would be neat if such a person existed, but William Gates III is not that person.
I suspect this is just pointless -- I concede that Bill Gates never took a handgun, walked through the electronic stores of the nation, and threatened people with their lives if they didn't walk up to the register and buy Windows and Office. Anything less than this, it appears that you won't recognize as unethical and illegal behavior. So be it.
I can quote Franklin too. I agree with Ben's sentiment -- which is why I'm glad the government is doing its job, and dealing with a dangerous monopolist before liberty is further eroded ...
Really?
Really.
Microsoft is most certainly not a true monopoly (operating systems are software programs, which are about as far from a true monopoly as anything in this world).
It would seem that Judge Jackson disagrees with you. :^)
While I will admit to not having read through the Findings of Fact myself yet, it seems clear that a major point was that Microsoft does meet the legal definition of a "monopoly."
Blame the consumers who bought PCs (and proprietary software) when what they ran was MS-DOS (or PC-DOS) for that dominance; it has nothing to do with M$'s recent marketing practices.
I disagree -- while consumer inertia due to backwards compatibility is certainly a factor in MSFT dominance, their attempts to lock in that dominance by (a) intentionally misfeaturing their software, but more importantly (b) bullying the sales channel to lock out competitive entries seems a clear abuse of a real monopoly position to me.
I think the true history of M$ "market dominance" is far more nuanced than that which you suggest.
I agree that there are a lot of nuances to the MSFT story; but I still think the upshot is that Microsoft broke the law.
One is always on dangerous grounds when deciding to flaunt a law because "it's unConstitutional anyway." You need to be willing to run the risk that the Supreme Court will not agree with your legal analysis.
Besides, I think it's pretty clear that Bill and MSFT flaunted the anti-trust laws out of their own "greed, envy, and will-to-power," rather than out of some selfless, Constitution-upholding principle.
Your Red-baiting aside, whatever you think of the politics of supporters of anti-trust legislation, the reality today is that anti-trust laws were passed, by popular demand, by the democratically-elected Legislature, and have been upheld by the Executive-appointed Judiciary. All three branches of our "checks and balances" involved.
True, and the GSA ought to do just this, but irrelevant to the questions of whether MSFT has broken the law and should suffer the consequences.
I agree that it would have been better if the GSA had been serious about "open systems" in procurement. Perhaps there would have been no need for an antitrust trial by this point.
But "most successful entrepeneur"? Give me a break. Check out How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates. Bill was never without an economic safety net, his product was not an innovation in any sense, and he had family connections in getting that fateful first IBM contract. I have much more respect for the thousands of mom-and-pop entrepeneurs who actually take some risks and whose livelihoods depend on customer satisfaction than for Bill's (admittedly masterful) skill in predatory business tactics and monopoly creation/exploitation.
Unlike you, I have no ability to peer into the soul of Janet Reno and discern her true motivation for having her department do its job.
"World's greatest wealth creator"? Bah humbug. BillG is the world's greatest (private) wealth concentrator. But he and his company have become so wealthy through the exercise of monopoly power (as Judge Jackson's FoF testify), not through building better software mousetraps. Denying one's competitors entry into the marketplace to protect the profit margin of your product can hardly qualify as "wealth creation." Extortion, perhaps, but not creation.
Boo hoo hoo -- let's all feel sorry for the poor oppressed billionaire, being persecuted by the Big Evil Gub'mint.
Bill's company is not in court for being sucessfull, but for breaking the law. Repeat that over and over until it sinks in -- "it's not about success, it's about crime." (Of course, anti-trust law is funny in that you have to be successful in order to have the means to break these laws -- but if Bill & Co. are so smart, and have so many lawyers on their payroll, you'd think they'd have heard of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act before now ...)
I do not subscribe to the theory that "what's good for Bill Gates is good for America."
All of these points (net job creation, American business dominance) are ... arguable. There's certainly some folks at Netscape who would claim that Bill didn't help build jobs at their company ...
Regardless, we must come back to the basic point: Microsoft broke the law. The DOJ action is not an example of government out of control -- it is an example of the goverment doing its job to enforce the (democratically enacted) law.
Sheesh. Might as well feel sorry for those sucessful businessmen, the cocaine smugglers, when they tangle with government law enforcement. I suppose they ought to try using the defense that they are simply hard-working capitalist entrepeneurs, and that the goverment ought to leave private companies alone and not tell them how to run their business ...
I should resist, but I won't ...
Ah. That would be different.
But still kosher, if in fact they do have a license from the FSF. This is one consequence of the FSF's insistance on copyright assignment -- they do have the right to negotiate a separate license agreement.
Remember that one of the classic points about the GPL is that people who want to use GPL'ed code in a proprietary fashion always have the right to go to the license holder and negotiate a different license ...
(... which makes things more interesting for Linux in the embedded space, as I don't think Linus has been as anal-retentive as the FSF about copyright assignment. Imagine trying to track down all the contributors to the Linux kernel to negotiate different license terms ...)
I agree that this is about giving Red Hat access to the embedded world (in which Cygnus is a major player). Notice that Microsoft gained dominance on the desktop, and is trying to play that upwards into the server space -- it would make sense for Red Hat to try a similar ploy, leveraging Cygnus in the embedded space to help create opportunities in desktop/server spaces.
One quibble: you write
This is all kosher. You can use GCC to write proprietary applications, and if you don't actually redistribute GCC, you are not required by the GPL to make your changes available.
This is a real issue, and is one that the free software community will need to deal with carefully in the days and years to come ...
I think you have been reading too many Tom Clancy novels. How can the ordinary citizen know that the NSA is "essential" for "fighting terrorism" when the NSA's very existance was classified for years, and its budget and most of its operations are still classified? Your statement about the NSA's "necessity" is in the classic sense pure pseudo-science, because it is non-falsifiable. How has the NSA prevented any bombs from going off on American soil. "Sorry, sir, that's classified. But trust us, we're the government, and we have your best interests at heart." The American politicial experiment is based on the assumtion that we dare not trust that the government has the best interests of the people at heart, and so the government is supposed to be accountable to the people, and restrained by the rights of the individual.
The erosion of liberties rarely comes packaged with a label that says "here is a totalitarian control; please hand over your freedom now." It most often comes packaged as "there are Bad People(tm) out there! Let us protect you!"
If we "need" a secret police state to protect us from terrorists, we have already lost the real struggle. A wise teacher once said, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36, KJV) The same question certainly applies to nations. What will it profit America if we become the new Roman Empire, able to enforce a pax americana at home and abroad, if we lose the very idea of what it meant to be "America" in the first place?
Evil and undemocratic means do not give real security
While I will no doubt offend the rabid secularists of /. with this, I would like to point out that the inscription on our currency of "In God We Trust" is a great and necessary viewpoint for the preservation of freedom. [Whether the USA is truly living up to this motto is another matter -- I think it is clear we do not.] If you don't like the word "God", feel free to substitute "Providence", "Fate", "the Universe", or what have you, according to your own tradition and belief. Regardless, the point is that one can try to create one's own security through strength and power, or one can simply try to do the right thing, and trust that it will all work out in the end. That is what "In God We Trust" ought to mean -- that as a nation, we are committed to the principles of liberty, and are willing to risk "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" to live as if this mattered. Even in a dangerous world with certifiable Bad People(tm) out there.
The "security" offered by relying on power is no security at all. Totalitarian regimes fall. Empires crumble. Economies collapse. "Invincible" armies are defeated, "impregnable" defences are broached, and the wheel of history turns again. And really, power is not so absolute as all that. If the USA were to turn into a privacy-lost, thought-police-controlled Absolute Safety State tomorrow, do you really believe that we could make ourselves invulnerable?
If we are willing to send our young men and women to fight and die for oil in the Mideast, don't you think the rest of us ought to be willing to assume some risk to live and die for liberty?
(Of course, the sadly obvious answer is that most Americans would today gladly trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety.)
This is a bug, not a feature
If our society is so fragile that a few terrorists, or the actions of a minor rogue state, can bring us to our knees unless we adopt draconian security measures, I think we ought to admit that this is a bug in the system, rather than resign ourselves to it as a "feature". Slashdotters are quick to lambast the fragility of Microsoft products and praise the stability and robustness of Linux -- now apply this same criticism to the larger technical, economic, and political infrastructures.
Does the electrical power grid offer key targets of opportinity for terrorists? Well then, we should get serious about "negawatts" in the Amory Lovins sense, and look at distributed, locally-generated power rather than relying on a massive electrical grid with a few key failure points and modes. Or even be willing to contemplate the practice of certain Amish groups, which have the rule of "use as much electricity as you want, as long as you make it yourself and don't tie into the grid." Better this, than to live with a secret police.
For an example that's nearer to fruition, consider Richard Stallman. While I might quibble with his analysis of freedom and software (I don't think access to source code is quite as fundamental a right as RMS does), he has certainly done the correct thing with his analysis -- he determined not to allow what he considered to be essential freedoms to be bargained away for the sake of convenience and security, and did the work necessary to live freely. We are all reaping the benefits of his adherance to principle today.
Repeat this analyis with other points of vulnerablity as needed. There's certainly lots of room for debate as to the benefits and drawbacks of particular answers, be we certainly have more options than to be forced to choose between secret, unaccountable intelligence agencies and "a war zone."
For a start on considering this way of thinking, there are several essays by Wendell Berry that may be helpful. (Note: Berry is not a pacifist -- but he believes that our current strategies of "national defense" fail to defend our nation.) Try "Property, Patriotism, and National Defense" in Home Economics and "On Peaceableness Toward Enemies" in Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community.
I don't know for certain that Marx originated the idea, but he certainly made heavy use of it.
And I don't think the fact that there were abuses of the peasantry invalidates the point of the alienation of industrial labor. It's just a different deviation from the ideal of a person who is working skillfully, with dignity, and enjoying the benefits of their own labor.
Well, that's a pretty fine distinction there, given how the two are intertwingled.
I think there's a good argument to be made that much of the technology of the Industrial Revolution was shaped by and for capitalism, and that the effect, coincidentally or by design, was to widen the gap between owners and laborers, and to bring about just the situation of "alienation of labor." But that's a longer argument that I have time to get into right now ...
Well, yes, but if you take the steps to keep that mass of little capitalists from coalescing into a few cartels and monopolists, is it truly laissez-faire anymore?
At any rate, I consider the fact that we do need to worry about cartels and monopolists under capitalism (witnes the Microsoft-DOJ trial) as very good evidence that capitalism, in any sort of "pure" form, does tend to the concentration of capital in very few hands. A situation that is not especially friendly to "little" things like freedom and democracy ... which are not synonomous with "free-market capitalism."
Oh, I think Marx hit the nail on the head with his "alienation of labor" idea -- that is, industrial labor is qualitatively different from agrarian/craft labor, because (1) the laboror is no longer in control of the "means of production", so he is working for somebody else, not himself, and (2) industrial labor treats the worker as an automaton, not as a real human. Based on my experience in factory work, I think he was 100% correct there. And he was justifiably outraged at the horrific abuses going on in the factory sweatshops of the early 1800's.
Now, Marx was completely wrong about the nature of the human problem (Marxian thought holds that people are fine, generous, and unselfish by nature, and if we can only get the social structures right we can create utopia), about "historical inevitability" and the natural progressions of societies (so wrong, that Lenin had to drastically revise Marx to explain Russian Bolshevism, as KM taught that it would be impossible for a society to move directly from a peasent/agrarian state to a Communist state without industrialization first -- precisely what did happen in Russia). And, of course, so awfully wrong about the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and the "withering away" of the State that it would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
Also, keep in mind that there are in fact many options besides Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" and Smith's "invisible hand" of laissez-faire capitalism. In fact, both stand for the concentration of working capital and the means of production in the hands of a few -- the difference being who those few are (Communists choose goverenment officials, Capitalists choose captitalists). For one alternative, try a search for "Distributism", or simply read some of the political works of G. K. Chesterton, such as What's Wrong With The World
Pretty much, although the various Christian groups's claims of "inerrancy" or "infallibility" are actually more limited than is popularly understood. Example 1: evangelical/fundamentalist groups speak of the Bible being "infallible" and "inerrant in the original manuscripts" -- but recognize that (a) translators can screw up or slant things, (b) individuals and groups are capable of screwing up their interpretations (obvious, given the disagreemnts between groups), and (c) there are areas of ambiguity where differences of understanding are quite legitimate. Example 2: When Roman Catholics speak of the Pope being "infallible," it is only "in matters of faith and morals and when speaking ex cathedra (formally on behalf of the entire Church)". Ex cathedra pronouncements have happened exactly twice in history, so it's not as if this means that the Pope can never be wrong.
Both groups also have the idea of "development of doctrine" -- that is, we refine our understanding as we both (a) work out the theological implications of the core truths that have been accepted from the beginning, and (b) work out the relationship of those truths to what we understand of the world around us.
Sure, that's reasonable.
Well, I would dispute both that (1) the understanding of Genesis as "not a science text" has been forgotten by more than a vocal minority of Christians in recent history, and (2) that the Genesis account has "little or no basis in reality" (for example, the idea that the universe had a beginning was unthinkable to Aristotle, yet modern cosmological theories support this -- but who knows, the cosmologers might change their minds again). But that would get us deep into the whole origins debate ...
That's probably the wise thing to do. :^)
*chuckle* Cute.
*sigh*
Please define "having a lock on truth," because the more we go round, the less I'm sure I know what you mean by this. It's certainly not a phrase that Christians use, in my experience. We might speak of Christianity being "true", or "containing the fullness of truth", or being "inerrant," but nobody I know or have read ever says that Christians "have a lock on truth." (Sounds like a system call to me --
int fd;
fd = open("truth", O_RDONLY);
if (fd < 0) {
perror("the truth isn't out there");
}
if (flock(fd, LOCK_EX) < 0) {
perror("unable to attain lock on truth");
} else {
printf("truth locked for exlusive access");
}
)
The traditional Christian (and before that, Jewish) understanding of how Genesis is supposed to be understood within the tradition is far from irrelevant here. If you want to insist on ignoring it, you're free to -- but then you're simply setting up a straw man.
Well, I don't actually think that miracles have ceased since the times you mention, but they certainly aren't as public and spectacular as the ones Moses worked ...
There are two very good little volumes by C. S. Lewis on just this subject -- Miracles and The Problem of Pain. He works through a number of arguments on just this topic. If you don't want to fund my web habit via Amazon, I'm sure a paper library near you should be able to find them. :^)
And that's all I'm going to say on Slashdot about this. This has been a good discussion; thanks.
OK, I can't comment broadly about creation stories in any religion except my own, so I'll stick to that.
Firstly, I think that you're mischaracterizing the Genesis debate within Christianity (unsurprising, the "Genesis as scientific proof" side gets most of the press time). But (as far as my limited knowledge goes), writers in the Patristic period (early few centuries of Christianity) understood quite well that (1) our knowlegdge of the physical world is provisional at best, and (2) texts such as Genesis have a moral purpose, are were not meant as treatises on "natural philosophy." A quote from that period is that "the Scriptures are meant to tell us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go." Since this was more than a thousand years before Darwin, I don't think this counts as "backtracking."
My point is, if you want to engage seriously whether and how science does or doesn't impinge on the truth claims of a religion, you have to understand what those truth claims are and how they are held within that religion.
You sure don't go for the piddly little objections, do you? :^)
What you're describing is, in a nutshell, "The Problem of Evil" and "The Problem of Freedom." These are big topics, and I suspect unanswerable to your satisfaction in a Slashdot reply. But I'll try anyway.
First of all, I would disagree that God has been inactive during "mankind's darkest hours." To be blunt, God was active at Auschwitz. I think even a passing familiarity with Maximillian Kolbe, or the countless other stories of faith and heroism in the face of evil unleashed, should make that clear. Your complaint is that evil should never have been allowed in the first place, and the fact that it is is disproof of either God's goodness or his power.
My counter-question to you is "how free ought we to be?" God, apparantly, seems to have valued our freedom enough that he treats us as truly free agents -- free, even, to disobey him and hurt others. What would you have happen? Bullets vanishing before they hit people? Money disappearing out of safes if people get too greedy? Sound waves morphing in midair so that hateful works cannot be transmitted? The neurons in our brains refusing to form thoughts that would be "sinthink?" (I'm borrowning heavily from a C. S. Lewis essay on this very subject for these examples, you should go to the source rather than rely on my poor paraphrase.)
That's the beginning of an answer. I realize it's not a complete answer yet, and doesn't address all your points. Unfortunately, that's all I have time for right now. Feel free to contact me if you want to continue the discussion.
Right, so far. Assuming that that religion and that "someone else" disagreed, of course. I can't think of any religion that claims that everyone else is 100% wrong (yes, including Christianity). "There is only one God, and He is not representable by human artifacts" is a truth statement that Christians recognize as true when a Muslim or a Jew says it as well.
Wow. That's an amazingly broad statement.
First problem: how do you know this? Have you studied all religions? What criteria are you using to find them objectively false? Two examples -- I know practically nothing about the traditional religion of the Lakota Sioux, so I would have no basis for claiming that their religion has some objective error (my ignorance doesn't disprove anything). So, I could not make this claim about the Lakota religion. Second example -- I know slightly more about Hinduism. While I disagree with Hinduism on religious grounds, I'd be very interested to know how you've managed to falsify it "objectively".
And, of course, since I am a Christian, I think you're mistaken about there being anything "objectively true" that contradicts the Christian faith. But full-scale apologetics is rather off-topic to Slashdot, so I'll leave it at that. Feel free to mail questions/flames/whatever if you want more elaboration.
Nah. Nerf(tm) objects maybe, nothing more. No flamethrowers required. :^)
I've read before where you point out that cryptography != security, that is, you can't sprinkle the magic pixie dust of crypto over software and expect that the resulting system is therefore secure.
Now that everybody and their sister is connecting to the Internet, via dial-up or even 24x7 cable modem or DSL connections, what level of paranoia is appropriate, and where do you recommend beginning?
Jon, Jon, if you're going to be a "free speech rulz, why can't everybody just get along" kind of guy, you really need to get over this allergy you seem to have to anything labelled "Christian" ...
If I hadn't been able to find the company page for the game, I would have guessed that this was a hoax/parody/whatever in the style of Jesux rather than a real product. But granted, somebody really is releasing a DOOM-style first person shooter game, with an "angels 'n' demons" theme, and marketing it as a "Christian" game.
I suppose if somebody is going to wrap a DOOM interface around the process list, and given the all the work done on DOOM/Quake "skins", that this was inevitable. But what wider conclusions are appropriate from this?
Wow. One sentence, and at least four glaring problems:
Let's see ... relate everything in the world to the Columbine shootings, drag out the old myths about Galileo ... flog, flog, flog.
Has it occurred to you that, rather than some sea change, this is simply some guys with a software firm out to make a few bucks?! .
As for myself, and the other Christians I know, the release of "War in Heaven" is going to be a yawner. For those Christians who don't mind DOOM/Quake (yes, they exist), this won't mean anything. For those who object to first-person shooter games because of the violent paradigm, the fact that the characters are dressed up as angels and demons will not make it better (in fact, it makes it worse, as it verges on being a blasphemous attempt to exploit for profit). I suppose there will be some small segment of Christian parents of teens who view the release of this game with a small sigh of relief -- those in the category of not liking this kind of game, realizing that kids are going to play them anyway, and being happy that there is at least a "kinder and gentler" alternative.
But for a person who objects so strenuously against the stereotyping of "geeks," and to the usage of stereotype to push an agenda, you've got some housecleaning to do yourself in that departmet.